After the circuit is formed on the surface, the semiconductor wafer is carried out with a grinding on the back face side of the wafer, thereby the back side grinding step which controls the wafer thickness, and the dicing step separating the wafer into predetermined size are carried out. Also, following the back side grinding step, the process treatment accompanying the heat generation such as the etching treatment, or the treatment carried out at a high temperature such as the vapor deposition of the metal film to the back side may be carried out. The semiconductor wafer being separated into the chip size (the semiconductor chip) is picked up and transferred to the next step.
Recently, along with the wide spread of the IC card, the semiconductor chip which is the constitution member of the IC card has been made thinner. Thus, the wafer which conventionally had a thickness of 350 μm or so is demanded to be as thin as 50 to 100 μm or less.
Also, in accordance with having a larger capacity and a higher performance of electronic circuit, layered circuit which the plurality of chips are layered three dimensionally are being developed. In such layered circuit, conventionally the electrical conductivity connection of the semiconductor were generally carried out by wire bonding, however due to the needs of recent years to make further compact and to have higher performances, the effective means without using the wire bonding is developed which is the method of providing electrodes (through-silicon via) penetrating through from the circuit formed face to the back side of the semiconductor chip thereby electrically connecting the chips on the top and the bottom directly.
As for the production method of such chip with the through-silicon via, for example, the method of providing the through hole at the predetermined position of the semiconductor wafer by plasma or so, and after pouring the conductor such as the copper or so to this through hole, then providing the circuit and the through-silicon via by carrying out the etching or so to the semiconductor wafer surface, may be mentioned. The semiconductor wafer provided with the circuit and the through-silicon via is diced by using the dicing sheet formed with the pressure sensitive adhesive layer on the base film, thereby the chip with the through-silicon via which is separated is obtained.
During the dicing step for obtaining the above described chip with the through-silicon via, the method is proposed in which the adhesive sheet formed on the base film is deformed by being pressed against the through-silicon via projecting out from the laminating face, and by embedding the electrode into the dented part of the pressure sensitive adhesive layer having roughly the same shape as the projecting part of the electrode, the semiconductor wafer formed with the through-silicon via is laminate/fixed to the dicing sheet, then carrying out the dicing to obtain the separated chip (Patent Articles 1 and 2). However, the dicing sheet recited in the Patent Articles 1 and 2, the pressure sensitive adhesive layer embeds the through-silicon via, thus the residue of the pressure sensitive adhesive layer may remain in between the through-silicon vias. Due to said residue, the chip surface is contaminated, and the reliability of the semiconductor chip may decline. The patent articles 1 and 2 proposes the means for reducing such remaining residues, however it did not necessarily completely eliminate the possibility of the remaining residues. Also, in the dicing sheet described in the patent articles 1 and 2, it is necessary to low regulate the elasticity during the dicing in order to embed the through-silicon via. Thus, it also had a problem that the chipping easily occurred due to the vibration during the dicing.